PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Chronic infection control relies on T cells with lower foreign antigen binding strength generated by N-nucleotide diversity
by Hassan Jamaleddine, Dakota Rogers, Genevi ève Perreault, Jérémy Postat, Dhanesh Patel, Judith N. Mandl, Anmar Khadra The breadth of pathogens to which T cells can respond is determined by the T cell receptors (TCRs) present in an individual ’s repertoire. Although more than 90% of the sequence diversity among TCRs is generated by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated N-nucleotide addition during V(D)J recombination, the benefit of TdT-altered TCRs remains unclear. Here, we computationally and experimentally investigate d whether TCRs with higher N-nucleotide diversity via TdT make distinct contribut...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - February 1, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Hassan Jamaleddine Source Type: research

Size precision in insect eyes
by Marco Mil án The building of fully functional and well-proportioned individuals relies on the precise regulation of the size of each of their constituting organs. A new study unravels a mechanism that confers precision to size regulation of the adult Drosophila eye through morphogen-mediated modulation of cell survival. (Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents)
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 31, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Marco Mil án Source Type: research

GABAergic regulation of striatal spiny projection neurons depends upon their activity state
by Michelle Day, Marziyeh Belal, William C. Surmeier, Alexandria Melendez, David Wokosin, Tatiana Tkatch, Vernon R. J. Clarke, D. James Surmeier Synaptic transmission mediated by GABAA receptors (GABAARs) in adult, principal striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs) can suppress ongoing spiking, but its effect on synaptic integration at subthreshold membrane potentials is less well characterized, particularly those near the resting down-state. To fill this gap, a combination of molecular, optogenetic, optical, and electrophysiological approaches were used to study SPNs in mouse ex vivo brain slices, and computational tools...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 31, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Michelle Day Source Type: research

Feedback control of organ size precision is mediated by BMP2-regulated apoptosis in the Drosophila eye
by Tomas Navarro, Antonella Iannini, Marta Neto, Alejandro Campoy-Lopez, Javier Mu ñoz-García, Paulo S. Pereira, Saúl Ares, Fernando Casares Biological processes are intrinsically noisy, and yet, the result of development —like the species-specific size and shape of organs—is usually remarkably precise. This precision suggests the existence of mechanisms of feedback control that ensure that deviations from a target size are minimized. Still, we have very limited understanding of how these mechanisms operate. Here , we investigate the problem of organ size precision using theDrosophila eye. The size of the adult eye...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 30, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Tomas Navarro Source Type: research

Evaluating protein cross-linking as a therapeutic strategy to stabilize SOD1 variants in a mouse model of familial ALS
by Md Amin Hossain, Richa Sarin, Daniel P. Donnelly, Brandon C. Miller, Alexandra Weiss, Luke McAlary, Svetlana V. Antonyuk, Joseph P. Salisbury, Jakal Amin, Jeremy B. Conway, Samantha S. Watson, Jenifer N. Winters, Yu Xu, Novera Alam, Rutali R. Brahme, Haneyeh Shahbazian, Durgalakshmi Sivasankar, Swathi Padmakumar, Aziza Sattarova, Aparna C. Ponmudiyan, Tanvi Gawde, David E. Verrill, Wensheng Yang, Sunanda Kannapadi, Leigh D. Plant, Jared R. Auclair, Lee Makowski, Gregory A. Petsko, Dagmar Ringe, Nathalie Y. R. Agar, David J. Greenblatt, Mary Jo Ondrechen, Yunqiu Chen, Justin J. Yerbury, Roman Manetsch, S. Samar Hasnain, ...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 30, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Md Amin Hossain Source Type: research

Combined analyses of within-host SARS-CoV-2 viral kinetics and information on past exposures to the virus in a human cohort identifies intrinsic differences of Omicron and Delta variants
by Timothy W. Russell, Hermaleigh Townsley, Sam Abbott, Joel Hellewell, Edward J. Carr, Lloyd A. C. Chapman, Rachael Pung, Billy J. Quilty, David Hodgson, Ashley S. Fowler, Lorin Adams, Chris Bailey, Harriet V. Mears, Ruth Harvey, Bobbi Clayton, Nicola O ’Reilly, Yenting Ngai, Jerome Nicod, Steve Gamblin, Bryan Williams, Sonia Gandhi, Charles Swanton, Rupert Beale, David L. V. Bauer, Emma C. Wall, Adam J. Kucharski The emergence of successive Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern (VOCs) during 2020 to 2022, each exhibiting increased epidemic growth relative to earlier circulati...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 30, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Timothy W. Russell Source Type: research

Time is of the essence: The importance of considering biological rhythms in an increasingly polluted world
by Eli S. J. Thor é, Anne E. Aulsebrook, Jack A. Brand, Rafaela A. Almeida, Tomas Brodin, Michael G. Bertram Biological rhythms have a crucial role in shaping the biology and ecology of organisms. Light pollution is known to disrupt these rhythms, and evidence is emerging that chemical pollutants can cause similar disruption. Conversely, biological rhythms can influence the effects and toxicity of chemicals. Thus, by drawing insights from the extensive study of biological rhythms in biomedical and light pollution research, we can greatly improve our understanding of chemical pollution. This Essay advocates for the integr...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 30, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Eli S. J. Thor é Source Type: research

The representation of priors and decisions in the human parietal cortex
by Tom R. Marshall, Maria Ruesseler, Laurence T. Hunt, Jill X. O ’Reilly Animals actively sample their environment through orienting actions such as saccadic eye movements. Saccadic targets are selected based both on sensory evidence immediately preceding the saccade, and a “salience map” or prior built-up over multiple saccades. In the primate cortex, the selection of each individual saccade depends on competition between target-selective cells that ramp up their firing rate to saccade release. However, it is less clear how a cross-saccade prior might be implement ed, either in neural firing or through an activity-...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 29, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Tom R. Marshall Source Type: research

Supporting open science at PLOS Biology 
by Lauren Cadwallader, Nonia Pariente Open science is key to PLOS Biology ’s mission, both in its daily operations and in the role we aspire to have in the scholarly ecosystem. Here, we reflect on open science at the journal and discuss how and why we shall continue to hold it central to everything we do. Open science is key to PLOS Biology’s mission, both in its dai ly operations and in the role we aspire to have in the scholarly ecosystem. In this Editorial, we reflect on open science at the journal and discuss how and why we shall continue to hold it central to everything we do. (Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents)
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 29, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Lauren Cadwallader Source Type: research

 Lhx3/4 initiates a cardiopharyngeal-specific transcriptional program in response to widespread FGF signaling
by C. J. Pickett, Hannah N. Gruner, Bradley Davidson Individual signaling pathways, such as fibroblast growth factors (FGFs), can regulate a plethora of inductive events. According to current paradigms, signal-dependent transcription factors (TFs), such as FGF/MapK-activated Ets family factors, partner with lineage-determining factors to achieve regulatory specificity. However, many aspects of this model have not been rigorously investigated. One key question relates to whether lineage-determining factors dictate lineage-specific responses to inductive signals or facilitate these responses in collaboration with other inpu...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 25, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: C. J. Pickett Source Type: research

The forkhead transcription factor Foxj1 controls vertebrate olfactory cilia biogenesis and sensory neuron differentiation
by Dheeraj Rayamajhi, Mert Ege, Kirill Ukhanov, Christa Ringers, Yiliu Zhang, Inyoung Jung, Percival P. D ’Gama, Summer Shijia Li, Mehmet Ilyas Cosacak, Caghan Kizil, Hae-Chul Park, Emre Yaksi, Jeffrey R. Martens, Steven L. Brody, Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi, Sudipto Roy In vertebrates, olfactory receptors localize on multiple cilia elaborated on dendritic knobs of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). Although olfactory cilia dysfunction can cause anosmia, how their differentiation is programmed at the transcriptional level has remained largely unexplored. We discovered in zebrafish and mice that Foxj1, a forkhead domain-contai...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 25, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Dheeraj Rayamajhi Source Type: research

Help biocurators to maximize the reach of your data
by Alexander Holmes, Denise Carvalho-Silva, Zbyslaw Sondka, Madiha Ahmed, Joanna Argasinska, Rachel Lyne, Amaia Sangrador-Vegas, Sari Ward Curated scientific databases catalogue and amplify research findings to maximize their reach. Authors should write their papers with this in mind, ensuring that data are accurate, easy to extract, and presented in standardized formats. Scientific data is becoming increasingly complex, making data curation increasingly difficult. In this Perspective, a group of biocurators present some simple guidelines for data accessibility that will help to increase the reach of published studies. (...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 25, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Alexander Holmes Source Type: research

Presaccadic attention does not facilitate the detection of changes in the visual field
We report a surprising lack of presaccadic perceptual benefits in a common, everyday setting—detection of chang es in the visual field. Despite the lack of sensitivity benefits, choice bias for reporting changes increased reliably for the saccade target. With independent follow-up experiments, we show that presaccadic change detection is rendered more challenging because percepts at the saccade target locatio n are biased toward, and more precise for, only the most recent of two successive stimuli. With a Bayesian model, we show how such perceptual and choice biases are crucial to explain the effects of saccade plans on ...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 25, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Priyanka Gupta Source Type: research

Recording animal-view videos of the natural world using a novel camera system and software package
by Vera Vasas, Mark C. Lowell, Juliana Villa, Quentin D. Jamison, Anna G. Siegle, Pavan Kumar Reddy Katta, Pushyami Bhagavathula, Peter G. Kevan, Drew Fulton, Neil Losin, David Kepplinger, Michael K. Yetzbacher, Shakiba Salehian, Rebecca E. Forkner, Daniel Hanley Plants, animals, and fungi display a rich tapestry of colors. Animals, in particular, use colors in dynamic displays performed in spatially complex environments. Although current approaches for studying colors are objective and repeatable, they miss the temporal variation of color signals entirely. Here, we introduce hardware and software that provide ecologists ...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 23, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Vera Vasas Source Type: research

Killer prey: Ecology reverses bacterial predation
by Marie Vasse, Francesca Fiegna, Ben Kriesel, Gregory J. Velicer Ecological variation influences the character of many biotic interactions, but examples of predator –prey reversal mediated by abiotic context are few. We show that the temperature at which prey grow before interacting with a bacterial predator can determine the very direction of predation, reversing predator and prey identities. WhilePseudomonas fluorescens reared at 32 °C was extensively killed by the generalist predatorMyxococcus xanthus,P.fluorescens reared at 22 °C became the predator, slaughteringM.xanthus to extinction and growing on its remains....
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - January 23, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Marie Vasse Source Type: research